Weekend Confirmed 134 - Dishonored, XCOM, Star Citizen

Dishonored, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Star Citizen, and Retro City Rampage are just some of the topics covered in this week's episode of Weekend Confirmed. Host Garnett Lee is joined by Jeff Cannata, and Shacknews managing editor John Keefer.

Dishonored, XCOM Enemy Unknown, and some Retro City Rampage make up the veritable fruit salad of videogames devoured on this delicious Weekend Confirmed. Shacknews managing editor John Keefer joins Jeff and Garnett for the feast. They take their time enjoying it all, getting into the highlights from a trio of games that brought them plenty of delight while being careful to talk in terms that avoid spoiling anything. Of course Borderlands 2 still manages a cameo with the debut of the Mechromancer this week and its first DLC coming next week. And naturally the conversations include plenty of twists and turns, but we wouldn't want to spoil that either. All that, Finishing Moves, and the football tailgate make this one tasty episode.

Original music in the show by Del Rio. Get his latest Album, Club Tipsy on iTunes. Check out more, including the Super Mega Worm mix and other mash-ups on his ReverbNation page or Facebook page, and follow him on twitter @delriomusic.

From The Chatty

Dishonored, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Star Citizen, and Retro City Rampage are just some of the topics covered in this week's episode of Weekend Confirmed. Host Garnett Lee is joined by Jeff Cannata, and Shacknews managing editor John Keefer.

Some thoughts on XCOM reloading. In general, strategy games (and board games!) are games that the player can lose. That's one attribute that makes them different than other genres. You play through a game of Civilization and reach the 'end'... but you might not have won. Though you can reload in Civ it doesn't (usually) have enough of an impact that you can win any particular game of Civ you play.

But in some games the ability to reload takes what would be a strategy game and turns it into a game that can no longer be lost. It'd be like reloading your turn in Settlers in Catan, silly. It turns it into a game you play 'through', like a shooter or rpg, and reach the end. You don't play through Assassin's Creed for 20 hours and then find out you 'lose' and start planning on making another 20 hour attempt. But this can totally happen in a game of Civ or XCOM.

Reloading in XCOM is somewhere between Civ and Settlers in effect. It is possible to make bad strategyic layer decisions and still lose, but the ability to reload any battle that you don't win perfectly has a large effect and certainly on normal, likely makes the gane unloseable. At this point XCOM is a game you play 'through' rather than play to the end and either win or lose.

So if you go into XCOM expect to finish it the way you would clear Arkam Asylumn or any gme, you should play with reloading. If you go into XCOM and approach it like a game of Civ of Chess -- something you might lose in the end -- Iron Man is the way to go!